WASHINGTON, May 19: The United States is at “the right level of alert” following a reported new spurt in intelligence chatter pointing to another terrorist attack against the country, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said on Sunday.

Dr Rice, who was appearing on the CBS Face the Nation programme, said the current level of alert, which had been maintained for some time, would not have been there prior to the Sept 11 attacks.

She was commenting on reports circulating since Saturday night that the government has intercepted a series of vague messages that seem to be communications among Al Qaeda operatives who could be planning a strike in the US.

Part of the new threat perceptions might be based on information gathered during interrogations of Al Qaeda men in American custody.

But it has not been clearly explained why news of the new warnings has come at this particular time when the administration is under fire for keeping the public in the dark about signals that it had picked up prior to the Sept 11 attacks.

Dr Rice emphasized that the fresh threats were non-specific, and no predictions could be made on their basis. Vice-President Richard Cheney has said the question about a new attack is not if, but when.

The withholding of information available to the administration before Sept 11 relating to possible Al Qaeda hijackings has been the subject of intense controversy here since last week.

The administration has stressed that the intelligence briefings in the summer of 2001 related to US interests overseas and lacked specificity. It could not have been predicted on their basis that anyone would use hijacked planes as missiles.

Meanwhile, a report in The Washington Post on Sunday recalls a 1995 plot to blow up American jetliners and then crash a light plane into the CIA headquarters. The report says the suicide mission against the CIA headquarters involved a Pakistani pilot who had trained at flight schools in North Carolina, Texas and New York.

The pilot, Abdul Hakim Murad, was arrested 13 days after four members of an Algerian group linked to Al Qaeda hijacked an Air France flight as it prepared to leave Algeria for Paris.

According to the Post story, Murad was discovered mixing a bomb in his apartment in Manila. He was said to have later confessed to Philippine authorities that he was part of a conspiracy to deploy five-man teams to plant bombs on 11 planes operated by US airlines.